Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Pedro Martinez wasn't particularly sharp in his debut with the Phillies, but the offense made sure he didn't have to be. In fact, with the way the Phillies swung the bats on Wednesday, racking up 14 hits and 12 runs, anybody could have won the game.

Pedro looked good at times, but his final line wasn't impressive: 5 IP, 7 hits, 1 walk, 3 runs allowed and 5 strikeouts. His ERA for the night was 5.40, a number just lower than Jamie Moyer's ERA of 5.47 for the season. Pedro needed 99 pitches to get through 5 innings, about the length the Phillies should expect from him every time out. He needs a lot of pitches to get through each batter because he doesn't have overpowering stuff and needs to dance around the strike zone and mix his speeds.

The Phillies offense was explosive on the night, getting homers from Shane Victorino, Jimmy Rollins and Raul Ibanez. It was a total team effort with every starting position player had a hit and scored a run in the game, and all drove in at least one run except Jayson Werth.

The real story of the night may be the fan that threw a beer at Victorino when he was making a catch in the outfield. I will have more on that once I find some pictures of the incident (Click here for it), but I will say that if something like that happened in Philly, you would be hearing about it everywhere the next day. Chicago fans will get a pass because "they've had such hard luck over the years." Whatever.

In all, a decent debut for Pedro, but anyone, including Jamie Moyer, could have won this game. It will be interesting to see how Pedro does in a start where he has a little more pressure on him. When the game was close, he looked much sharper, but once the Phillies put a ton of runs on the board, he seemed to let up a bit. I give him a pass for his effort tonight, he did just about all you could expect from someone who hasn't pitched in the majors in nearly 11 months.